Vision and Operating Model
Lena Shtern’s vision is to provide alternative medical care to people dealing with cancer, in high availability and in complete equality to all sectors of Israeli society without a difference in religion, race, gender or financial ability.
The vision has been at play in the center since 2007. The Yuri Shtern Center has won an honorable mark from the Ministry of Health, a salutation from the Israeli Alternative Medicine Association, and an award for community contribution from Israel’s Channel 9. In September of 2023, Lena Shtern, the Center’s founder, was awarded the Presidential Medal.
The Center developed a unique model for the recruitment, training, operation, and accompaniment of professional volunteering in integrative medicine in Israel. The model is based on professional volunteers in the field of holistic medicine, and is constantly accompanied, supported, and instructed by the entirety of the professional staff of volunteers.
The Center recruits, trains, and accompanies holistic caregivers in touch-based therapy, Chinese medicine, and emotional treatments.
The operation of a professional volunteering system is only made possible by creating a voluntary and caregiving framework that is fixed in terms of its time, location, and treatment space.
An inseparable part of the Center’s model is the professional support of the caregivers, both in the group and the individual level. This support is done by a group of instructors, all of whom are mental health professional, who are also volunteering their time, and who provide group guidance to our caregivers once a week. In addition, our caregivers go through various additional activities through caregiver associations and club, study in various panels from leading medical professionals, and in different lectures.
Since its foundation, the center has also become a center for professional training in integrative treatments in the oncological space, and it trains hundreds of caregivers throughout Israel.